Kelly Hart, an English language arts teacher at South Middle School, works with seventh-grader Marcell Green, center, during lessons at the school, Friday, Feb. 12, 2016.

As the Kansas Legislature works to meet the Supreme Court order calling for a new school funding formula, keep your ears open for one figure in particular: 65 percent.

Some education policymakers have said they would like to see districts spending a higher percent of their budgets on instruction, and a common suggestion is at least 65 percent of operating expenses.

The Lawrence school district doesn’t quite meet that mark, but some school officials believe it is the wrong target anyway.

“I think that the mechanism that’s being used for determining what dollars are getting to students is asking the wrong question, honestly,” said Vanessa Sanburn, president of the Lawrence school board. “And I think it’s meant specifically to get the public thinking that there’s all this extra, wasted money when in fact there isn’t.”

For the district’s operating budget, which excludes funds spent on facility improvements and debt payments, the percentage spent on instruction is about 63 percent. When looking at all the district’s expenses, the district is projected to spend 53 percent of its $151.3 million in total expenditures on instruction for the 2015-2016 school year, according to Kansas State Department of Education reports.

Board members and district officials have said that the instruction category is misleading because it does not include funds that directly support students’ learning. Most notably, the category doesn’t count student support services that include social workers and counselors or instructional support services that include curriculum development and librarians.

Together, funds for student and instructional support services make up about 10 percent of the district’s total budgeted expenditures for this school year, and about 12 percent of its operational budget. Sanburn said she thinks that the way the district uses counselors, social workers and library media specialists is an integral part of instruction, and some of those funds should count toward instructional or “classroom” spending.

“Those professionals do provide direct instruction within classrooms and help support student outcomes, and so some arbitrary mechanism that defines those staff members as being outside of the classroom doesn’t make a lot of sense to me,” she said.

On Thursday, the Kansas Supreme Court struck down the block grant school funding law currently in place as unconstitutional, citing that is does not equitably fund school districts. The court ordered legislators to come up with a new formula before next school year. While it is unclear what kind of funding formula lawmakers will create, Sanburn said she thinks using allocations for categories such as instruction isn’t the right approach.

“Using those budget categories and then backing into a budget based on certain percentages is not a smart way to plan for services,” she said. “It’s better to determine what the needs are and then hire staff and staff buildings based upon those needs.”

The rest of the district’s budget is pretty evenly spread over the remaining seven categories, but one of the next highest percentages belongs to a category that has also faced some sharp criticism from lawmakers: administration and support. A large part of that category is made up of some of the highest salaries in the district — such as the superintendent, district administrators and school principals — and amounts to about 8 percent of total expenditures and 9 percent of the operating budget.

Board members have said they plan to offer the incoming superintendent $205,000 to $215,000 per year, and the average salary of the district’s approximately 50 administrators is $98,000 per year. The district’s approximately 1,000 teachers and other licensed staff make an average salary of about $54,000 per year. Sanburn said that while that difference is significant, the demands of administrative jobs — including recent uncertainty caused by cuts and changes to school funding — require competitive salaries.

“Principals and other administrators make more money than teachers or other professionals in the building, but it’s also a pretty tough job that not everyone wants to do,” Sanburn said. “So I think one of the benefits to that position is that it comes with a higher salary.”

Over the past few years, the portions of the Lawrence school district’s budget spent on instruction and administrative costs have stayed relatively constant. Despite the idea of a budget based on category allotments, district finance officials said until a new formula is enacted, the percentages won’t weigh heavily on budget decisions.

“We plan for what we know…” said Kyle Hayden, assistant superintendent of business and operations for the district. “This has been kind of the cycle for a number of years. Every year at this time of year they’re messing with the formula, they are talking about allotments or cuts.”

The district has begun planning for next school year’s budget, and board members looked at some of the category breakdowns at their most recent school board meeting. Kathy Johnson, director of finance for the district, said that while the district will make its budget plans under the block grants, plans will include specific adjustments the district could make when a new formula is put in place.

“There are so many unknowns at this point that basically we function under Senate Bill 7 — the way it is in the block grant — until something else surfaces,” Johnson said. “That is all we know and that is what’s in place, and that’s basically the only way we really can plan, knowing that something will be coming down and we have to be able to possibly zig or zag when that happens.”

The Kansas Supreme Court has given the Legislature until June 30 to come up with a new funding formula. The school district approves its budget annually after a public hearing in August.